How to Make a Perfect Melt-In-Your-Mouth Roast Beef

Roast Beef is the ultimate “weekend” or “special day” dish. It is a usual at my Sunday Suppers, countless restaurants have it as a special on the weekends, and it’s a quintessential part to holiday meals like Christmas or Easter.
My recipe for the best roast beef will work on any cut of roasting beef and is completely foolproof. The recipe is ridiculously simple and easy but leaves you with the juiciest most succulent piece of meat.
I have one master recipe for roast beef but two cooking styles because it can get really smoky in those first few minutes. If you have a really good vent fan then the original version is fine but at my new house I don’t have an exhaust vent – just a sad little microwave over the stove that blows right back into the kitchen. After several stress filled, smoke alarm blaring, doggies freaking out chaos I came up with the second method that uses my grill and I call “Grill Roasting.”

The Essentials To Roasting Beef

Quality, Quality, Quality…

The key to the best roast beef, the key to the best prime rib, the key to great tasting delicious food is the quality of your ingredients.

The Beef: Grass-fed, Free Range, Antibiotic Free, Hormone Free

Entire books have been written discussing the benefits of eating natural pastured beef vs the poison known as commercial beef. In a nutshell organic grass-fed free-range beef has less calories, less saturated fat, less cholesterol, more Omega 3 heart healthy fats, more vitamins, more minerals, more nutrients and free from all the poisonous antibiotics and hormones found in commercial beef.

Where can I buy grass-fed beef?

More and more places are starting to carry grass-fed beef. Typically you’ll have to look at more high-end grocery stores like Whole Foods and other similar places but now at my Pavillions (Safeway’s higher end brand) grocery store not too far from where I live they have a full meat counter setup for grass-fed, antibiotic & hormone free beef. The number one resource I would recommend to anyone is the EatWild.com website. It has a full listing on stores and farms that sale directly to consumers; it’s an amazing source for pastured beef, lamb and bison; free-range poultry & pork and organic produce. The site breaks it all down by state and region so you are certain to find at least one source of this high quality food that is relatively close to you.

Choosing the Right Cuts of Meat for Roast Beef

Some of my most common cuts of beef for roasting:

Rib Eye Roast (Prime Rib)

Strip Loin Roast (New York Loin Roast)

Tenderloin Roast (Filet Mignon Roast)

Top Sirloin Roast

Tri-Tip Roast

Sirloin Tip Roast

Picking the best piece of meat

Two things to keep in mind when you’re picking the actual piece of meat for roasting: freshness and marbling.
Freshness can be best found by the color of the meat. You want a vibrant red hue – the color is a great way to tell freshness for organic grass-fed meat; however, if for some reason you have to buy the unhealthy commercial beef keep in mind they may use food dyes to artificially create the illusion of freshness when it’s actually long past its prime.
Always pick the meat with the best marbling (highest amount of intra-muscular fat) this will keep the meat moist during cooking, provide amazing flavor to the meat and make it juicy and succulent once it’s time to eat.

Beef is actually graded based on the amount of marbling:

Prime – Most marbling, very rare

Choice – Second best, most common “premium” type found at grocery stores

Select – Average marbling, most common type of beef found in stores or restaurants

I always think of the marbling as little flavor explosions and as the best natural seasoning.
As you can see in the image below there is the vibrant red as well as all the streaks of fat woven into the meat.

Recap on how to pick the best piece of beef

Get the best quality beef you can: 100% Grass-fed, Organic, Local

Pick a cut that is ideal for roasting

Pick the meat that has the best marbling and color

The Best Roast Beef Recipes

Some of the amounts listed here are a little vague and that is intentional because the amount used will vary depending on the size of your piece of meat and your personal preferences on taste for example the amount of salt or pepper used. My advice would be when it comes to roasting you always seem to need more seasoning then you would initially think you need. Between the high-heat searing and the fat melting and dripping away much of the seasoning will end up in the roasting pan – making for a very flavorful gravy to spoon over your sliced roast beef later on!

You Will Need

Roasting Pan with Rack

Tin Foil

Original Roast Beef Recipe – Oven Method

This way produces the best Roast Beef in the world but it gets super smoky in the first portion and should only be attempted if you have a very strong kitchen vent or you don’t mind setting off the smoke alarms in your house.

How to Make The Perfect Melt-In-Your-Mouth Roast Beef

Prep Time: 5 Mins. Cook Time: 2 Hrs. 20 Mins.

Ingredients

1 Organic 100% Grass-fed Beef for Roasting

Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Garlic Powder

Rosemary, dried; small amount

Thyme, dried; small amount (optional)

Oregano, dried; small amount (optional)

Salt

Pepper

Instructions

Pre-heat oven to 500

Place meat on roasting rack and drizzle with olive oil, using your hands rub the olive oil onto the entire roast

Season the bottom – in my experience most people always forget to do this, they season the top but not the bottom! – with salt and pepper then place back down onto roasting rack

Season the rest of the roast with salt, pepper, garlic powder, a little crushed rosemary and any of the other herbs, if you’re using. This can all be done up to the day before – be sure to take the roast out of refrigerator 1-2 hours before cooking.

Place meat into the oven making sure roasting pan is in lower half of oven and cook at 500 for 5 minutes per pound – it will get smoky!

Lower temperature to 200 and cook for 2 hours or until meat thermometer reaches 140. It should take 2 hours but sometimes ovens run hot or cool and that would be the only reason for a time discrepancy. I always recommend an investment in a good meat thermometer.

Remove roast from oven, tent with tin foil and set aside to rest for 10-15 minutes

Carve into thin slices, cutting against the grain

Grill Roasting An Amazing Roast Beef

Grill Roasting was a technique that came about out of necessity since my new home didn’t have a proper kitchen vent and after setting the smoke alarms off several times my wife insisted I find an alternative solution. At first every time I would make roast beef I would have to take a ladder and disconnect all the smoke alarms in the house then do the first 5 min per pound portion of the roast then go back and reconnect all the alarms; it was a huge hassle! Then one day it hit me – I can use the BBQ like an oven and I’d never have to worry about the smoke again. And so now this is my go to method for preparing roast beef; my wife and dogs are much happier. With this cooking style I highly encourage you to use a meat thermometer. All grills are different and there could be many different different variables and obstacles to maintaining constant temperature so it does require a little more babysitting. I routinely check on the temperature gage throughout the cooking time and I have a remote read meat thermometer so I can see how the meat is coming along without having to open the grill lid. Grill roasting takes less time to cook because during the main cooking time the grill is running hotter than an oven would; unfortunately, you lose some of the “slow and low” benefits so the key is to try and get the grill to maintain the lowest temperature as possible (for me it’s around 275) but just keep in mind the closer to 200 you get the closer to 2 hours it will take like the oven method.

Grill Roasting The Perfect Roast Beef Recipe

Prep Time: 10 Mins. Cook Time: 1 Hr. 45 Mins.

Ingredients

1 Organic 100% Grass-fed Beef for Roasting

Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Garlic Powder

Rosemary, dried; small amount

Thyme, dried; small amount (optional)

Oregano, dried; small amount (optional)

Salt

Pepper

Instructions

Pre-heat the grill by turning all the burners on then adjusting to keep the grill at 500-550 with the lid closed

Place meat on roasting rack and drizzle with olive oil, using your hands rub the olive oil onto the entire roast

Season the bottom – in my experience most people always forget to do this, they season the top but not the bottom! – with salt and pepper then place back down onto roasting rack

Season the rest of the roast with salt, pepper, garlic powder, a little crushed rosemary and any of the other herbs, if you’re using. This can all be done up to the day before – be sure to take the roast out of refrigerator 1-2 hours before cooking.

Place the roasting pan with the roast onto the grill making sure the roasting pan is over direct heat then close lid and cook at 500-550 for 5 minutes per pound

Turn off most of the grill burners leaving 1 on low making sure roasting pan is now over indirect heat and lower temperature to 250-275 range and cook for 1 hour to 1.5 hours or until meat thermometer reaches 140. It should take about 1.5 hours but maintaining set temperatures is much more difficult with a grill and that is why I have specified temperature ranges.

Remove roast from oven, tent with tinfoil and set aside to rest for 10-15 minutes

Carve into thin slices, cutting against the grain

Either of these methods will create the best most delicious most melt-in-your-mouth tender and juicy roast beef you’ve ever had in your life! So go buy some beef and let’s roast up something yummy for the next feast day.

Comments

There is a major faux pas in your article about beef you had the order of quality incorrect choice is the number to level of quality not select as you stated in your piece about roast beef. I don’t know what your readership is but I sure hope its not too big because you just gave a lot of people the wrong information

Hi Will first of all and most importantly thank you for pointing out that error. I’m happy to get that corrected! Secondly next time you want to lower yourself and make unnecessary attacks take a moment to proofread your comment and correct any errors.